Sheet metal and other workpieces can be fabricated into a wide range of useful products. The fabrication (i.e., manufacturing) process commonly requires various bends and/or holes to be formed in the workpieces. The equipment types used in fabricating sheet metal and other workpieces include turret presses and other industrial presses (such as single-station presses), Trumpf style machine tools and other rail type systems, press brakes, sheet feed systems, coil feed systems, and many other types of fabrication equipment adapted for punching or pressing sheet materials.
The present invention provides multi-tools that can be used with many types of fabrication equipment. Turret presses are one type of machine tool on which multi-tools have been used. Following is a brief background discussing multi-tools in the context of a turret press. The various multi-tool embodiments of the present invention, however, can be used with any type of fabrication equipment, such as single-station presses or other presses not having turrets.
Turret presses have found wide use in forming sheet metal and the like. These presses commonly have an upper turret that holds a series of punches at locations spaced circumferentially about its periphery, and a lower turret that holds a series of dies at locations spaced circumferentially about its periphery. Commonly, the turrets can be rotated about a vertical axis to bring a desired punch and die set into vertical alignment at a work station. By appropriately rotating the upper and lower turrets, an operator can bring a number of different punch and die sets sequentially into alignment at the work station in the process of performing a series of different pressing operations.
Multi-tools for turret presses and other presses allow a plurality of different tools to be available at a single tool-mount location on the press. Thus, in place of a tool with only one punch, there can be provided a multi-tool carrying a number of different punches. With such a multi-tool, any one of a plurality of punches carried by the multi-tool can be selected and moved to an operable position. Then, when a ram of the punch press acts on (e.g., strikes) the multi-tool, only the selected (or “activated”) punch is forced into engagement with the workpiece. Such multi-tools can carry punches, forming tools, dies, combinations of punches and forming tools, combinations of punches and dies, etc.
Existing multi-tools provide a number of advantages over using a conventional single tool at each tool-mount location. However, there is a great deal of room for further advances in multi-tool technology.